Capture the magic and glamor of Bollywood on mobile

The 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona is awash with mind-boggling tech marvels and ingenious innovations. Someone just stole the limelight from the Nokia-You Tube partnership. There is little doubt that the next untapped goldmine is the so called “fourth screen” (read mobile phone). So what happens when we have on our hands the world’s second most populous nation, which is home to the most prolific movie industry, the fourth largest mobile phone market plus the fastest growing entertainment industry? Add to that a fast-growing cinema industry (roughly 3.5 billion movie ticket sales) that is now making huge waves in North American and European markets, accounting as much as 17% of total share. Err… the math is pretty simple; Umm, something in the range of about 2.6 billion mobile phone screens. Let’s not even think about the possible revenue figures in the offing. Ok, I might have overestimated, maybe by a “few” hundreds of millions.  At least you get the idea.

That is precisely what Bollywood and Hungama’s Mobile Company of India are bent on doing, and they are very serious about the whole thing. The groundbreaking deal will be steered by Roamware, a global leader in the field of mobile communications solutions. It will make use of Media Call Technology from Roamware which facilitates the incorporation of movie content into mobile telephony. Moreover, it also allows for sharing of video clips. From my deduction, this will ultimately elevate the concept of viral video marketing a notch higher. Just to prove that these folks are not bluffing, two Bollywood films, “Zahir” and “Matriomony” have already premiered at the conference.

The movie initiative will definitely give our friends from Tinsel town something to ponder about. This is a pioneering combination of three bigwigs who are global forces in their respective industries. We are talking of a movie industry that is never shy chalking up over a thousand films each year, a telco which is the largest developer cum publisher of Indian entertainment and the fast-rising global leader in roaming & value-added solutions.

With all these rumblings and goings-on coming out of the Barcelona congress, we may have to think of an appropriate name for our dearly loved mobile phone.